Análises recentes de LeYaoTang

That is amazing! It is a wonderful tribute to Senna with a certain touch (small touch) of RPG or adventure atmosphere in the Career Mode.

The strong point - the feeling of speed.
However the fuel does not apparently interfere with weight and the deepest crashes/bumps do not slow the car down as much.

I also had a problem with the Steam Controller - the camera was changing frequently automatically, I do not know if it was because of some configuration in Steam Controller.

The circuit in Germany is very beautiful!

I did not get to explore the Career Mode too much but I think it could be more complete, more RPG and less arcade. I was not disappointed, but I had the expectation that there could be more changes to the car (car builds) and more "dialogues".

For the price, it is really worth it, even for people who don't really like cars or formula 1 (maybe 20% off of the standard will be a fair price).
I personally believe that cars are a thing of the past for reasons of urbanity and the environment - and that is why we have video games to immerse us in speed safely!

Agile retro sneaking game.

In SpriteStack we trust!

Toodee and Topdee - Steam Version - v 1.0.0.4.

The metagame is a boom of creativity and knowing on algorithmic thinking. In contrast it is an aesthetic promise above gameplay. The "cutscenes" are more the game than the player's experience.

Is this an indie game for sure? In fact it is a game made by only two brothers. Despite of this the final game was in partnership with Super Rare Games publisher (based in London) mainly for marketing. In the press kit website content we can get: "The jam version received great feedback, and so Gonen and Ori decided to make it their first commercial project". I suspected that it was a game jam game, it has many compact features typical of a game jam game. You can search for the original Ludum Dare 41 entry - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/toodee-and-topdee and play the pre-alpha/alpha version - http://www.gpstudios.com/games/view/toodee-and-topdee .

References/Legacy - Maybe FEZ by Polytron could be a strong reference in genre mechanics and small gimmicks. Also the integration of the ludic, the narrative and the music in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP by Superbrothers and Capybara Games, with music by Jim Guthrie. The deus ex machina use is very frequent. We could see the similar plattform/puzzle level design in Master Spy by TURBOGUN too. But without a doubt the game is more based on other designs that appear a lot in game jam games.

Characters - Personality traits - Toodee is rude in speech; Topdee is polited. Todee is cool, awesome, Sonic-like. Topdee is not too charismatic, indeed is very no guts. However we will see at the end of the game a very interesting change in the characters, like a monumental plot twist. The character design of the protagonists is cliché due to the fact of the cute/kawaii and super deformed form is in check nowadays. In the present we have other potentials in a impressionist way to explore pixel art without cute/kawaii/SD appeal - in other words we do not need forced face expressions and big heads to mark humanism in the small frame of pixels, it is not a technical problem today and we could explore other aesthetic markers (including doing it in tribute to retro games).
The side characters are sort OK sort a little bland. The glitches and guardians could have more design in it. We feel a promise of lore and metagame network by the characters however it not happens. Need more ludo-engagement through the plot.

Visuals - that kind of pixel art emulated in low poly 3D is a really solid tendency nowadays in indie development, see the searching for the tools picoCAD and SpriteStack in the present year that can "convert" 2d pixel art in a so-so-3D art (not voxel). In the game there is a magic feature with solidness - it is very impressive the change between the 2D (Toodee) perspective and 3D (Topdee) perspective and vice-versa in the dialogues scenes. It dinamizes the game! The game physics is a great topic! The cloud physics and art are very simple and fun.

Thinking on the playability and the ludo-moto - the puzzles and the design of plattform jumps is well-constructed in a hard way. "Hard" here means a rather orthodox logic - straight. However the pig mechanics in not "hard", being an epicentre of playful creativity. The boss/guardian fights are well constructed in a cubic/kaleidoscopic point, very unique indeed - reminds me of some boss battles in Contra: Hard Corps (Konami, Mega Drive) that are very strong in singular gimmicks.

Original Sound Track quick analysis in spontaneous notes:
1 - Home - it is an normal almost chiptune dub lo-fi, just OK. A mix of idling OK with a very OK;
2 - Hello World - relaxaway - better than OK, but OK instead. More or less similar to the FTL soundtrack;
3 - Jungle Kingdom - same of the 2 vibe;
4 - Elementemple - Ok to good, but very 2010s in a bad way;
5 - Exceptions - deep and frail in feelings, so so like FTL OST too. Very bad with drums (However in the game does not match!);
6 - Error - sad, down, OK;
7 - Return - not good. Tetrisistic but not well executed;
8 - Ordalook - not good. Too fake desert soundtrack;
9 - Yumbrozi - confusion, bad drums;
10 - Korimlio - interesting - very good - eletric guitars!;
11 - Ozraeen - more guitars! Nice! Drumba!;
12 - Toodoo - very fast - not good - arrogant - horrible!;
13 - Incompatible - good relaxaway track indeed. The best lo-fiist track;
14 - Corruption - weak - fast and OK;
15 - Ladybugs - the better OK track.
The general feeling is that the music would be more interesting in another game and in another decade, maybe in the year of 2012 when the FEZ game was published. The same compelling and compulsory visual aesthetic of the game jams can be felt in the musical aesthetic. We can feel great aesthetic vices present in the inner culture of Ludum Dare jamers. On the other hand - we can feel de efforts of the integration between game design and musical composition near to the work of Jim Guthrie in Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP in some aspects, but far from something koshiroist.

Localization - The short dialogues are well translated and the options of languages (10) are embracing considering the indie audience and the indie project. (it is worth remembering again that the game puts itself as indie and is made indie but has a connection with Super Rare Games).

Optimization - No problems with standard emerging hardware. The minimum requirements stipulated is i3, 4 GB RAM - which is somewhat alarming considering the game is low poly and even the last few levels do not seem to weigh as much.

Accessibility - The easy difficulty change in options menu makes it possible for people with motor restrictions or even people with little manual skills to play and enjoy the game until the end. The same goes for those who are not cognitively well-skilled at handling puzzles or those who do not like puzzles. Using a steam controller and testing the haptics feedback it is possible to say that the game is rotten in haptic design, there is only one form of vibration. There could be vibrations due to falls and other impacts for example as in Hollow Knight by Team Cherry - and that would not be that difficult to implement even for a small group of developers.

Finally, the game is too short and the cost-benefit is not interesting when we balance the aesthetic promises against what the game actually is in praxis experience. Maybe the game needed another 1 or 2 years of development. It was not enough to transform the submitted game jam build for Ludum Dare. Could have explored more the metaworld with more lore and satyric and pythonesque plot and being more careful with mechanics and music.

The balance points out that the Toodee and Topdee is not recommended since the negative topics outweigh the positive topics looking from the point of view of a player from an emerging country who will buy the game on Steam. Although there is no desire to ask for a refund - possibly a good update could come or a free DLC.

Original full review - wasdtest dot com / reviews

Metacritic - leyaotang

Follow my Steam Curator page - https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/40501430-WASD-Test/lists/

Tropico 6 is quite fast food compared to what it appears to be the impact it is trying to make.

Tropico 6 unlike Tropico 3 and Tropico 4 (while having some of the charm of Caribbean culture) lacks that soul of Tropico 3 and Tropico 4 that have attracted so much in the past decade.

No politics soul!

If we think about what would be the moto in the current Tropico games that followed the isometric old Tropico games, it could be: the promise not of another type of more complete simulation, but of an emulated interactive social integration that could bring perhaps a non-realism of a structure in which the player could venture into the tropics comically and politically. It's a problem with several games from various western franchises that moved from isometric to 3D. When we imagined in 2D and text-based we used more our skills, knowledges and creativity. At a lower resolution we were able to figure out how to venture into what the game couldn't offer visually, and sometimes this was very positive as the game designers themselves invested more in plot and dialogue to compensate. However, with the promise of 3D, the sides that we could show in these games didn't show up very well as power of involvement, immersion, flow. Tropic 3, 4 and 5 carried out this change reasonably - right there it already seemed to be the limit of this change from isometric 2D, there would be no way to expand the game much. In Tropic 6, we can sense the limit in plot weakness and auxiliary character interactions in short, repeated dialogues, which already existed in reasonably the same way in previous Tropico games. There hasn't been a huge expansion of what we'd really like to experience in Tropico - politics. I want to be more tyrant, or more hard-line or more corrupt!

With Tropic 6 the multiplayer online game could be the big change but it wasn't enough. The online mode could keep the player for a few more hours of gameplay, but overall at around 10 hours of gameplay the average young adult player who already knows similar games tends to drop their saves.

Optmization - Low. That Unreal Engine build needs 16GB RAM and SSD to run properly.

Accessibility - very low.

Strong suit - in Tropic 6 it's relatively easy to enable an infinite money mode and unlock more features and quickly advance the ages (including the dark Swiss Broker feature - that it is very fun -) - although this facility makes the player quickly resort to an overpower path/ god mode.


Original full review - https://www.wasdtest.com/reviews/tropico-6

Metacritic - https://www.metacritic.com/user/leyaotang

Follow my Steam Curator page - https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/40501430-WASD-Test/lists/

I followed the development closely and the game design remains so so, with an artificial way of inserting the plot in the gameplay. Also the art style does not match the interface and the world map. But the game as a standard minor world box game is well executed.

This remake was very well done, deepening some art and design features that could not be worked so well in the MSX2 Era. It now has a 32bits shapé.
The blasts and blast colliders were done well.
The soundtrack on the selection screen is also neat, with impactful sound effects.
All of this takes us to an atmosphere of space horror, as if it were a more adult Metroid-like.
Nowadays the we could consider that remake an indie ititiative.

It has atmosphere and mechanics that mutual complements to guide the player with a feeling that everything can collapse in minutes! The tactical gameplay, world art and narrative create immersion into a real humanitarian crisis. More proof that we do not need ultra-modern 3D graphics to be able to dive into a game in the 21st century.
You can see the influence of Chris Avellone's non-linearism in this great game!

A very boring and predictable game.

It is a dramatic/realistic karate game that I almost do not recommend these days. I love it versus I do not fully support it.

This is not an indie fighting game. In fact it is a game made by the Italian studio Crian Soft but embraced by the great Italian 90's publisher Milestone S.r.l (ex Leader Group/ nowadays part of the German-Austrian Koch Media).

I have followed KARATE MASTER Knock Down Blow since its first version released on itch.io in 2013~2014.
Upon the release of KARATE MASTER 2 Knock Down Blow for Steam, I soon rushed to buy it believing in a more complete game with an adventure - a karate experience beyond the fighting game itself. However the almost RPG experience in II was not so well explored, it was very focused on the grinding. A few things in the first one ( itch.io ) worked even better, including the plot and the dark atmosphere of a martial arts underworld, as well as the previous possibility of multiplayer.

References/Legacy - from the legacy of digital games from the 80s and 90s - the game mixes game design concepts and aesthetics from Art of Fighting (we have camera zoom and huge pixel art!) by SNK; from Street Fighter (I and II) by Capcom (we can also include as a reference the anime of Street Fighter II); and for some mechanics like the positioning Gedan/Chuudan/Joudan: The Karate Tournament チャタンヤラクーシャンク by Mitchell Corporation, a crazy solid Japanese-central (non-Okinawan) proto-olympic karate game mixed with Kabuki (?).

Karate - About the Karate in KARATE MASTER 2 Knock Down Blow is worth mentioning that it is a modern sports karate derived from an even more sporty and mixed modality of Kyoukushin. Ethical issues and links to Okinawan culture are almost nil.
As I am a karateka linked to Okinawan Karate (Uechi Ryu), I have many criticisms on the plot and the application of this martial art such as the question of challenges to other martial arts but I understand that the type of Daido Juku Kuudou (or close and derivative styles) is very far from any Okinawan ryuu present in Okinawa and even Karate strands in Central Japan. For karate lovers, it can be a bit disappointing if taken too seriously - it is more interesting to see it as a fictional part of pop culture (Karate Kid/Cobra Kai for example).
In the Steam version I was able to unlock all achievements, except 2, which involved defeating Oboro and a bear. As incredible as it may seem unlocking the money achievement was a lot of fun, making money and maneuvering forklifts was very exciting for me (I felt like a stevedore!) even though it was very repetitive. I also enjoyed unlocking some badges with the cards - I became 1st Kyu Level 5, 500 XP.

Accessibility - The game has multiple sound feedbacks, which greatly helps a visually impaired person to play and lots of visual feedback with clear and very large symbols that would help a hearing impaired person to play. It has a manual with a lot of text that can also help.

Optimization - It really runs satisfactorily on computers with 1GB of RAM, although the first game on itch.io runs even better. Optimization is very good indeed even with such big sprites.

As this type of game is extremely difficult for the programmers and the game designers, I continue to recommend it, even after Crian Soft abandoned the game some time ago in favour of other projects. On the other hand KARATE MASTER 2 Knock Down Blow is in fact very weak in RPG, in plot and has no multiplayer and the last update was in June 2016.

Original full review - https://www.wasdtest.com/reviews/karatemaster2

Metacritic - https://www.metacritic.com/user/leyaotang

Follow my Steam Curator page - https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/40501430-WASD-Test/lists/